The man's brutal grip was overpowering my small body, leaving me helpless despite my best efforts to free myself. After fishing me out of the bushes, he hurriedly carried me towards the campfire, where several other girls waited. My blurry eyes recognized the silhouettes of a beastkin's ears, the others, however, didn't have such distinctive features.

I didn't care who or what they were, for to me, they were nothing but murderers and poachers! Of course, I tried to bite them, whenever a finger, a hand or an arm came near me. I screamed at them, with this deafening any yet pitiful voice of mine, struggled to free me with all of my legs, and tossed around any insult I could think of.

They seemed more than just unimpressed by my attacks. Instead of backing off, their voices got even more chaotic and louder. Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, the man pressed me with the back onto the ground, right next to the blazing fire. I could feel its burning heat on my skin.

A young girl with shoulder-long, black hair bent over me. She placed her slender hands on my tiny stomach, before closing her eyes and beginning to chant a magic spell.

 

«She wants to kill me!? She wants to kill me! This bitch!!»

 

I started struggling for my life, yelping, biting and shrieking even more, but it was to no avail. The man just placed his hand around my mouth trying to silence my protests, but I ruthlessly chomped down on it.

He didn't even care a bit. Even though I used all my remaining strength, which wasn't much, I was unable to bite a bleeding wound into his finger. There maybe was scratches, I wasn't able to tell, but nothing more than the salty, greasy taste of grilled meat and sweat stuck to the hand of the fiend.

The girl's magic chant cut deep into my ears. Her voice sounded angelic, but I couldn't understand as much as a single word of hers. While the humans spoke in the same language the demons used, their magic was adopted from races like the elves or ciliari and naturally could only be cast using their tongue.

I hadn't learned elvish or any other weird kind of language. There was no reason to, as my former body was already born with affinities to all kinds of illusion- and mind-control magic; I could use all of those without wasting minutes on half-singing complex phrases in which you risked your life in the case that you did it wrong.

This body had no such abilities. It was born weak and would stay weak forever. I was only able to hope that I would find the hero and somehow manage to get rid of him without wielding a sword or magic.

Suddenly, the girl stopped chanting her ridiculously complex magic spell. A series of small bolts of lightning seemed to spring forth from her hands. I didn't see them, they were invisible, but I could feel them in any part of my body.

First, they spread into my legs and the tail, they then invaded my chest and the arms to then attack my head. All of my body felt blazingly hot as if the girl had decided to burn me alive. I only realized that this couldn't be any further from the truth when the fiery lightning slowly died away and with them the wounds my body had gathered over the day.

My stomach didn't hurt anymore from the beaks that had been driven into it, my ears didn't itch from bloody scratches and, most miraculously, the arrow wound began to close. This last injury naturally took much longer to heal than the others, but it eventually was gone, as if it had never existed.

I was petrified, so much in fact that the guy could release his finger without me giving at least the slightest fight this body should be able to do. He lifted me up, against his chest, and looked at me with a weak smile which looked kind of sinister thanks to the vivid, orange light the fire gave off.

 

"See?", he asked, "It's much better now, isn't it?" Before I could answer him, he had already turned towards the black-haired girl. "Thank you, Myra."

"Did it injure you, Masaru?" She asked with a tint of anxiety in her voice. "Does it hurt anywhere?"

"Don't worry. This little cutie would never want to hurt anyone. It was just a little afraid."

 

«Little cutie ...»

 

"It probably has lost its mother, seeing how battered and hungry it looks." He raised me high above his face. "Oh, it is a she."

 

«Did he just?! Did he REALLY look at my-»

 

「You bastard! Dirty good-for-nothing! First, you attack me and now you try to take a glance at my private parts?! You virgin! You dirty virgin!」

 

My angry yelps painfully echoed in my ears, but I didn't care! After all that I had been through, this man was a welcome target of all my stress to unload on. So I insulted him, screamed at him, tried to bite and scratch him, but all of this only made him laugh. He laughed louder and louder with each time my attacks grew more vicious.

 

"Such a lively one!" He laughed. "Too bad it is all alone now. Maybe we should take care of it?"

"It is a wild animal," a girl with curly, long hair chipped in, "it belongs to the forest."

"But it cannot take care of itself," the man said, with pity and reluctance coloring his voice.

"We cannot take it with us. It is dangerous."

"Don't worry. I will protect it. Those demons won't even get close to it!"

 

«Demons? They are fighting demons?»

 

"Sometimes I really ask myself if you are really fit to be the hero, Masaru ..."

 

Hero. That single word echoed through my mind, endlessly repeating itself. I looked up. Blonde, well-kept hair was framing a handsome face. Sky-blue eyes stared down at me and a gentle, loving smile laid on his lips.

 

«...»

 

CHOMP! CHOMP, CHOMP, CHOMP! I attacked his fingers, biting down on them with all my new-gained strength. The hero laughed at my pitiful attempts, driving me to use even more vicious attacks. I scratched at him, pierced my teeth deep into his fingers, before releasing them only to scream a series of insults at this murderer and fiend. He laughed all of this off as if nothing had happened.

 

「I WILL KILL YOU! I WILL BITE YOU TO DEATH! TAKE THIS!」 CHOMP! 「DIE!」 CHOMP! 「DIE, YOU BLONDE GOOD-FOR-NOTHING!」 CHOMP! CHOMP! CHOMP!

"Such a lively girl!" He laughed.

「DIIEEEE!」